Final chemo treatment

Final chemo treatment

Written Oct. 22, 2012

This past week went amazingly well. I had looked back in my online calendar that I “charted” during my treatments 6 months ago and noticed a supplement that I had taken during chemo that I left out this time. I started taking it Monday eve and I did so much better. No nausea at all, no leg aches and very little fatigue! I am so thankful for a better week! So tonight I am wide awake! I have laid in bed for an hour…trying to sleep…I should know better. This journal entry has been in my head most of the day and I have been putting it off…because sometimes I just don’t want to experience the emotions that will come with it. BUT I know how God speaks…and He won’t let me rest until I write. Last week at chemo the nurses mentioned the fact that my next treatment (tomorrow) would be my last…EVER! I got teared up thinking about it. I have pushed the thoughts away because every time I think about it…I get emotional. Tomorrow’s treatment will be my 24th and final treatment in the original Lymphoma treatment plan. I look back and I cannot believe it has been 2 years and 7 months since the Lymphoma diagnosis. In a way it has flown by. It also sometimes doesn’t even seem real. My life has changed in so many ways. Financially, we have had to live on less than half of what our income was 3 yrs ago. Yet God has faithfully supplied for all our needs. I have experienced real anxieties and fears yet found God’s Word to be alive and active and useful as a weapon to be more than a conqueror against those things. I have learned to look at life differently..to find joy and to be grateful in all circumstances. Today as I was reading a friends book, The Secret of Counting Gifts,( www.heidikreider.com) I was again reminded of the many things I am grateful for and the challenge to daily take an inventory of those gifts that I receive. The thing that totally wrecks me inside is the gift of being a full time wife and mother. I don’t know that if I wouldn’t have received the gift of a Lymphoma diagnosis..that I would have had the courage to step out of my job and come home full time. (that is another journal entry in itself..) As I sit here reflecting on what has happened over the past couple years, I also think of the uncertainties in my future. The thing that gives me hope is remembering God’s faithfulness in my past. Tomorrow is a big day for me. Celebrating a completion of treatment, but also celebrating that I still have been given another day. I think back on the almost crippling fear and anxiety that accompanied that cancer diagnosis. I can still remember the overwhelming heaviness in my chest like it was yesterday, yet here I am almost 3 years later. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything! Tomorrow my mom, Eric and the kids will accompany me to my chemo and walk out with me as I “ring the bell” signifying I have completed my treatment plan. Ringing that bell will be proof to me that I CAN do all things through CHRIST who gives me strength! I know this diagnosis wasn’t a mistake…there have been many good things come from it. I sit here and I am thinking about those in the beginning stages of a new cancer diagnosis full of fear, or those experiencing the grief of losing someone they loved, or a newly divorced single mom who is wondering how she will make it “on her own”…I am reminded of the Good News..in all those circumstances…that God has an answer to them all…but it is a day by day..trusting, seeking, depending on Him. I pray that no matter what your current circumstance may be that one day you will be able to look back and see the the pain, fear, loneliness served a purpose. I pray that you will be able to find true joy in the journey, as I have.